Experts from Computer Weekly and Quest discuss a powerful approach to database monitoring

Experts from Computer Weekly and Quest discuss a powerful approach to database monitoring

Managing multiple diverse database platforms and hybrid environments has become the new norm for DBAs. But the evolving database landscape comes with its challenges. In this video, Computer Weekly Editor-in-Chief, Bryan Glick, and Quest Product Manager for Database Solutions, Pini Dibask, discuss emerging trends and best practices for monitoring complex, cross-platform database environments.

[MUSIC PLAYING] Hello, welcome to this Computer Weekly video. I'm Bryan Glick. I'm the editor in chief of Computer Weekly. And in this video, we're going to be looking at the topic of database management and monitoring. An area that is essential for every IT department. But one that perhaps can be easily overlooked. Now, to help me understand some of the issues that are affecting this area at the moment I'm joined by at Pinney's Debask.
Hello there.
Pinney is Product Manager for Database Monitoring Solutions at Quest. Pinney, thanks for coming and joining us today.
Thanks for having me.
This is an often overlooked area or perhaps even taken for granted the area in many organizations. But there's a lot going on in the area of database management labor. What are the big trends that you're seeing at the moment?
This industry of databases has began in the 70s when the first relational database management systems had been introduced to the world. So it's a very mature industry. But what we're seeing at this time, at this stage, and in the past few years is several trends. The first one is the no SQL solutions. The trend of the new non-relational database technology. We've seen an explosion of new database technologies such as MongoDB, Cassandra, and others. And the reason for that is very obvious.
The new modern applications have their own requirements, especially in terms of the scalability of data, the flexibility of data, the requirement to have horizontal scaling of data. And that's why there are so many new solutions out there. Another trend is the cloud. We see that the cloud is all over the place. And in database in particular, we see that the growth is very high. IDC's latest report shows that there is more than 50% annual growth in terms of cloud databases aka database as a service. So yeah, it's definitely very, very strong trend. But the on premise, market still dominates the database business. So we see that most of the database deployments are still on premise. Although the trend of the cloud databases is much stronger than the on premise.
The last trend that I want to mention is the increasing adoption of open source relational databases such as Postgres and MySQL, They have been there since the 90s. But what we see quite interesting is that in the past few years, they are being considered and being used as a mission critical databases. They are no longer there just for their purposes or test purposes.
They are being used for mission critical applications. And the reason for that is to reduce costs. For example, Gartner last report shows that those relations are open source religion and databases can reduce cost of the commercial databases by 96%, which is very impressive. And also that by 2018, 70% of in-house applications will be developed on open source relational databases. So this is definitely another very strong trend. So to summarize my answer, I think that the top trends now in terms of the database business are cloud, new database technologies such as non-relational databases, and the increasing adoption of open source relational databases such as MySql and Postgres.
OK. Let's explore some of those trends in more detail then. Clearly, this is an area where a lot is changing at the moment. And certainly a lot of organizations are moving away from the days when they had a single database supplier or a single monolithic database. What are the main challenges that you see your customers facing around database administration and results of some of these trends?
Yeah. So performance and ensuring high availability were always key responsibilities for DBAs. But today's DBAs are under pressure. And the reason for that is because they are no longer required to support only a single database platform or maybe two database platforms like they used to do in the past. Now, the DBAs are evolving. They are required to support different that platforms from different technologies. So it's not only several relational databases it's also commercial as well as open source relational databases. It's also non-relational databases from different locations-- both on premise and in the cloud. So it's much more challenging for DBAs. That's why they are under pressure. And I think that the main challenge for DBAs is to show high level of quality of service for their databases to make sure that the business runs smoothly. And their applications have the best quality of service that is required.
Question as a software vendor, you're working with lots of organizations facing the sort of challenges that you've described there. How typically are you seeing your customers going about tackling those challenges?
What are our customers do, they leverage our tools to simplify and automate their daily job. I've mentioned their requirement to ensure a high level of quality of service for their applications. So for example, they use Foglight, which is an enterprise heterogeneous 24/7 monitoring solution. Which also allows them to have very deep insights and visibility into the database performance. And they use that in order to ensure that they're cross-platform cross database environment is stable. And it even allows them to understand if there is any issue before it happens. So by proactively monitoring their cross database environment they can really ensure high level of quality of service, top performance, high availability. And that's very, very important for today's complex database environment.
One of the trends you mentioned earlier on was the growing popularity of no SQL, NoSQL, and these sort of tools to manage unstructured databases. How is that affecting the traditional relational databases? Is there still going to be a place for a traditional RDBMS in the future?
Yeah. We believe that traditional relational databases are here to stay. The reason for that is because although the NoSQL has some great advantages, especially when it comes to handling massive volume of data, flexible data, having a requirement to scale horizontal data across multiple nodes we still say that there are benefits for the traditional relational databases such as having strong consistency, strong durability, full supporting SQL language. And for those transactional applications that require those options from the database, then obviously traditional relational databases are a very good option for them. So we believe that both solutions can live together. Each application has its own requirement. And we don't see any of those technologies going away.
Now, you also talked earlier on about cloud and how that's changing the database market as it is changing so many areas of technology. And you talked about this concept of databases as a service. Running your database of premise in the cloud. Now, clearly that's going to have a big impact on database administrators and the management of databases as well. What's happening there?
Cloud really changes the way DBAs works in terms of it allows them not to focus on the mechanics of the database and focus more on innovation and on the business needs the business requirements. So this is why it's so important for the DBAs to be able to monitor and make sure that the cloud is functioning properly. Because it's still database that they're responsible for even though it resides on the cloud. But it really allows them to simplify some of the tasks, automate some of the tasks such as the deployment, provisioning of new databases, and new schemas. So it's a great opportunity for the DBAs.
Another thing that is important to mention is that the cloud really introduces a new concept of performance management and cost Management by turning the database and making that database work more efficient. For example, making a query run is twice faster, it can really reduce the costs. Because in the cloud you pay by resources. If you can manage to have your database use less resources then the DBA can basically save money for his company. So I think cloud impacts the DBA by allowing the DBA to have more time to spend on the business and innovation, and less time on the mechanics of the database, which is great.
To try and wrap some of that up that you've talked about, cloud, you've talked about the growth of technologies like NoSQL and open source database tools. For an IT leader who's trying to juggle all this and work out how best to make use of all these technologies, if you could give them one piece of advice to help them to make sure that all their databases run smoothly and that they get the best strategy to make the most of all the different technologies now available to them, what do you think that one piece of voice would be?
I would advise to choose the right tool for you-- for the company. Make sure you have a list of requirements of what you need to get out of the tool in terms of coverage and functionality. And the reason I think that having the right tools is a key to success is because not using tools today, is like using maps and compass instead of GPS. Right? It's much more simple. It's much more easy to work with tools they can help you get insights into database visibility. Some customers still use scripts, and they build their own in-house utilities. So by leveraging the database tools it can basically save money, save time, and make DBAs be much more efficient.
Who would want to achieve all of that? Pinney [? Dubask ?] from Quest, thanks for coming in to join us to share have your experience of working with organizations facing some of these challenges around managing databases. That's all we've got time for on this video. I hope you've been able to take away some useful hints and tips around some of the challenges that you're facing in managing and monitoring database systems. Thanks for watching.